Full Stack Engineer

At MetaPhase, we believe Quirky is Cool and being authentic is the only way to be! We take the work we do very seriously and do a lot of important mission-focused work for our clients. We are individuals with different passions and strengths who take as much joy in the work we do as from those we work with. Today, we have a team that is invested in creating new solutions that lean forward, challenge the status quo, but also reflect our intimate knowledge of our customers’ business. Over the years we have fostered a culture in which we are united by shared values—passion, solidarity, generosity, curiosity, and boldness—and these come alive in the work we do and how we do it.

Together, we know our people are our difference—for our clients and our colleagues.

Are you ready to:

• Work alongside a dedicated and diverse set of people to offer honest advice and practical guidance to our clients?

• Learn and grow by taking advantage of every opportunity available to you?

• Be the difference and make it happen?

MetaPhase is seeking a skilled Full Stack Engineer to join our team supporting and enhancing a modern, cloud-native web application hosted in Amazon Web Services (AWS). In this role, you will design, develop, and continuously improve a mission-critical application that integrates with multiple internal and external systems. The ideal candidate is a product-minded engineer who is comfortable working across the full application stack and has strong experience with React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, PostgreSQL, RESTful APIs, and AWS cloud-native services. You will help build responsive single-page applications (SPAs), scalable backend services and APIs, and secure cloud infrastructure using modern open-source technologies and engineering practices. We are also looking for engineers who know how to use AI-enabled software development tools including OpenAI Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, or similar tools responsibly and effectively to accelerate development, testing, debugging, documentation, and code modernization while maintaining engineering quality and security.

What You Will Be Doing:

• Partner directly with customers, product owners, and end users to understand business needs, operational workflows, pain points, and desired outcomes and translate them into actionable product and technical requirements.

• Facilitate and participate in customer discovery and working sessions to define requirements, evaluate solution options, refine the product vision, and establish priorities for incremental delivery.
• Collaborate with customers and cross-functional teams to translate the solution vision into features, user stories, acceptance criteria, prototypes, and technical approaches, refining them as requirements and user needs evolve.
• Engage customers throughout the development lifecycle to demonstrate working software, gather feedback, validate assumptions, and iteratively refine the product based on real-world use and stakeholder input.
• Partner with customers, testers, and end users to plan and conduct functional testing, usability testing, user acceptance testing (UAT), and product validation, ensuring delivered capabilities meet business and user needs.
• Design, develop, enhance, and sustain complex web applications using modern open-source frameworks and cloud-native architectures.
• Design and develop reusable front-end components, application state management, client-side routing, forms, data visualization, and integrations with backend APIs.
• Develop secure, scalable RESTful APIs, backend services, and system integrations supporting internal and external systems.
• Design and optimize solutions using AWS cloud-native services, with an emphasis on scalability, interoperability, performance, observability, reliability, and security.
• Apply test-driven development (TDD) and automated testing practices, including unit, integration, API, and front-end testing, to deliver reliable and maintainable software.
• Use AI-enabled development tools such as OpenAI Codex, Claude Code, and Cursor to accelerate software development, prototyping, refactoring, testing, debugging, documentation, and technical analysis while applying appropriate engineering review and security controls.
• Ensure solutions comply with applicable federal cybersecurity requirements, NIST standards, and Section 508 accessibility requirements.
• Conduct code reviews, troubleshoot defects and production issues, collaborate with testers, and contribute to technical and client documentation.
• Support product demonstrations, UAT, production releases, and post-release validation, working directly with customers to identify issues, assess feedback, and continuously improve the solution.

What We Need From You (Required):

• U.S. Citizenship required (NO EXCEPTIONS). Must be able to obtain a Public Trust clearance.

• 2+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant hands-on full stack web application development.
• Strong professional experience building modern web applications using React and TypeScript.
• Experience developing single-page applications (SPAs) and a strong understanding of component-based UI architecture, client-side routing, state management, asynchronous data access, responsive design, and browser-based application performance.
• Experience with Tailwind CSS or comparable modern CSS frameworks and strong knowledge of HTML5, CSS3, and responsive web design.
• Strong understanding of modern JavaScript/TypeScript development practices, including package management, build tooling, linting, testing, and dependency management.
• Experience designing and developing RESTful APIs, backend services, and system integrations using modern open-source frameworks and technologies.
• Strong SQL skills and hands-on experience designing, developing, and optimizing solutions using PostgreSQL or comparable relational database platforms.
• 2+ years of experience designing, developing, deploying, and supporting applications on AWS.
• Experience developing and deploying containerized applications, including hands-on experience with Docker.
• Experience with automated testing and modern software engineering practices, including unit testing, integration testing, API testing, code reviews, and CI/CD.
• Experience with Git-based development workflows and CI/CD platforms such as GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, or AWS developer tooling.
• Hands-on experience using AI-enabled software development tools, such as OpenAI Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, or comparable coding agents/assistants, as part of professional software engineering workflows.
• Demonstrated ability to validate, test, secure, and critically evaluate AI-generated code rather than relying on generated output without engineering review.
• Understanding of application security, authentication/authorization, secure API development, secrets management, logging, monitoring, and cloud security best practices.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills with the ability to work effectively with Agile development teams, product owners, customers, and technical stakeholders.

Bonus Points (Preferred):

• Experience applying AI-assisted or agentic development workflows to improve developer productivity, software quality, automated testing, documentation, code modernization, or delivery velocity.
• Familiarity with secure use of generative AI in software development environments, including protection of sensitive information, source-code governance, human-in-the-loop review, and validation of generated code.
• Experience working with federal clients or within a government contracting environment.
• Experience implementing Section 508 / WCAG accessibility requirements in modern React applications.

• Experience with Next.js, Node.js, Express, NestJS, or comparable TypeScript/JavaScript backend frameworks.
• Experience implementing application observability, including structured logging, metrics, tracing, dashboards, and alerting.

Work Setup:

Remote with occasional meetings in the Washington, DC metro area

Clearance & Education:

• Must be able to obtain a Public Trust clearance. U.S. Citizenship required.
• Bachelor's Degree strongly preferred with a technical major.

Benefits & Perks:
At MetaPhase, we care about your well-being and success. Our benefits include generous PTO, federal holidays, parental leave, and comprehensive health coverage (medical, dental, vision, life, and disability). We also offer a 401(k) with company match, FSA/HSA options, commuter benefits, and much more. Salary commensurate with skills and experience. Acceptable range $90,000-$105,000.